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A Very Moving
Covenant
by
Captain
Michael Ramsay
Swift Current, Saskatchewan and the world
for Jesus!
Michael's new book - 'Praise The Lord For Covenants:
Old
Testament wisdom for our world today' is now available from
www.sheepspeak.com
Genesis 11:1
-12:4: A Very Moving Covenant by Captain Michael Ramsay
Moving is something that is very familiar to families in The
Salvation Army. I have heard of
Officers and children of Officers who, if they
don’t move in a given year, need to rearrange the house
and make it look like they have
moved to a new home.
Genesis 11:1-9 and
12:1-4 has something to do with moving. It says in
11:2 that the people were moving either from the east
(KJV, NRSV) or eastward (NIV) when
they find a place to settle down for a while. Now,
just as my daughters’ have moved four times in their 8
and 9 years of life, respectively, I
imagine that the people in the story today of
Genesis Chapter 11 have moved quite a bit too. At any
rate they seem to have had quite
enough of it. They say to each other, Verse 4, “Come
let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that
reaches to the heavens, so that we
may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered
over the whole earth.” They are tired of moving; they
want to set down roots.
“But the LORD came
down,” Verse 5, “to see the city and the tower that
they were building” and He was not happy. Why wouldn’t
He be happy? Was it because the
people didn’t want to move anymore? Yes, that is
one reason. The other reason God wasn’t happy was that,
as we read in verse four, they say,
“Come let us build ourselves a city, with a
tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make
a name for ourselves.” These two
reasons, I suggest are very much intertwined
here. The people want to make a name for themselves
(pride) and they don’t want to move
anymore.[1]
Look at Genesis
1:28; this is important. Here we have God’s first
recorded words to humankind. The very first thing the
Bible records God saying to
humankind is here. In verse 28, God blesses the people
and says, “Be fruitful and fill the earth…(cf. Genesis
9:1)”[2] and then He gives them the
responsibility to take care of the wildlife and
the environment. God created us, humankind, and He
didn’t ask too much of us – He
simply asked us to fill and take care of the earth and then
later of course, Genesis 2:17, we run across the other
commandment God gave us – not to eat
the fruit off the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil – and we know how well that turned out.
So here we are in
our text today a couple of generations later and, if
we haven’t messed things up enough already by failing
to do one of the two things God
asked us to do, in Chapter 11 we are making sure that
we really mess things up by failing to do the other
one.[3] And by this time we should
certainly know better. God has already de-peopled
Eden
because of the first sin. He graciously, however, let Adam and
Eve live long enough to raise their own children, the
first two it seems cause them a lot
of heartbreak as their one son murdered his
sibling – but even then God is gracious – Adam and Eve
have more children and Cain (Genesis
4), the murderer, is spared the immediate
death sentence.
There is even more
that happens between the garden and today’s story
of
Babel
though: Noah’s
Ark
(Chapters 6-9). God has already drowned
the earth and much of mankind in His sorrow and then,
in his love for Noah, He not only
spared Noah and his family but God also bound
Himself through a covenant never to destroy the earth
with a flood again and God set his
rainbow in the sky to remind us of this (Gen
9:1-17). God is all-powerful and God is gracious.[4]
But even with all of this history,
even with the signature of God written with a rainbow
upon the covenant and set in the heavens above for all
to see (Genesis 9:17). Even with all
of this, the first thing God told mankind to do
when He created us was to go, scatter, fill the earth.
And the first story recorded after
Noah, his sons and the flood episode; the first
thing it is recorded that we do in the very first
narrative in Chapter 11 is to dig in
our heals and refuse to move. We are given the
commission to go and fill the earth but instead we
build a city with a tower and say,
‘thanks but no thanks God, I think I’ll decline the
orders to move.’[5]
Now, of course,
this has some parallels to our vocation. Some Officers
disobey orders to move because of their kids. Some
people disobey orders to move
because of their extended family. Some people disobey
orders to move because of their health. There are many
reasons to disobey orders (some of
them may very well be legitimate) but there is
never a good reason to disobey God and God has asked us
to move many times and God has asked
the people in Genesis to move but in Genesis
Chapter 11, they seem to be bankrupt of obedience. They
decide, 11:4, to stay “so that they
may make a name for themselves” – pride.[6]
Does this sound
familiar? Remember again back to Adam and Eve and
their original sin. Was this not also based on pride?
Did not they eagerly succumb to the
serpent’s temptation when he said, Genesis 4:5,
‘you will be like God’ all you need to do is eat the
one fruit that He has told you not
to eat. I wonder how many of us easily fall prey to
that temptation?
I remember not
that long ago Susan was reading to me from one of her
magazines and they took a poll amongst youngsters as to
what they wanted to be when they
grew up and what do you think most of them
said? Most of them said that they just want to be
famous…they don’t want to be famous
for anything particular necessarily. They don’t want
to cure cancer, fly to the moon, fight for world peace,
end world hunger or the sex trade
specifically – that isn’t what’s important to
them. They just want to be famous. They just want to
‘make a name for themselves’ as our
text in Genesis 11 says today and in Genesis 11
they want to make name for themselves by disobeying God
and remaining behind after he has
told them to scatter, go, and fill the earth.
Now, of course,
God vetoes their request to stay and just to show that
He isn’t eternally angry He gives them a bit of a going
away present – he gives them the
gift of tongues, so to speak (Cf. Acts 2).[7] He
confuses their language. They stop building this city
and they stop building this tower
and they go forth and fill the earth. There is a
little bit of irony here too. They wanted to stay and
build the city and the tower so that
they could make a name for themselves by working
together and staying put and now they have been
remembered throughout history for
just the opposite: becoming divided and scattering.
God will fulfil
His covenantal promises whether we willingly follow
along or not: he is faithful even when we are faithless
(cf. Romans 3:3,4) and in Genesis
11, we have the story of some people who suffer
the results of disobeying God and staying behind when
he tells them to move but the story
of humankind and of God’s blessing doesn’t end here
any more than the flood story ended with the
destruction of man’s evil plans.
Just like God saved humankind from the flood and blesses the
world through His covenant with Noah (Gen 6-9), if we
flip to the end of Chapter 11, we
see that God prompts someone to move again so that
He can bless his descendents and the world through
them. Scholar Terence E. Fretheim
tells us that the journey of Abraham’s family from
Ur can be understood as part of the migration from
Babel .[8] Genesis 11:31 records,
“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of
Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his
son Abram, and together they set out
from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But
when they came to
Haran, they settled there.” He stopped. He started
to move to
Canaan,
he stopped but even though he stopped, God didn’t
stop there, Genesis 12:1-4:
The LORD had said
to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your
father's household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you; I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who
bless you, and whoever curses you I
will curse; and all peoples on earth will be
blessed through you."
So Abram left, as
the LORD had told him; and
Lot
went with him….
Look at this then.
Here we have it: the good news of salvation. Abram
obeyed God. God said move and Abram moved and God
blessed all the earth through this
action:[9] this is where the gospel is mentioned
for the first time in the whole Bible, Genesis 12:3:
“…all the peoples of the earth will
be blessed through you.” This was God’s covenant
promise to Abraham and this is indeed Good News.
In Chapter 11 of
Genesis we see the pride and the stubbornness of
humankind as we plan to stay in order to ‘seek to make
a name for ourselves’ instead of
following God. We then see Terah, presumably a
good man, start this journey but stop along the way –
before he ever reaches what will
come to be known as ‘the promised land’.[10] But
through all of this, God doesn’t give up on us. He
calls out of that same land as the
defiant city and the tower of Babel; He calls out of
the same household of Terah who started the journey but
didn’t finish; He calls Abram and
through Abram He blesses the whole world because
-as we know- this blessing of 12:3 that ‘all the
nations of the earth will be
blessed’ is ultimately fulfilled with the incarnation, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Salvation has
already been provided for the whole world, we just have
to decide whether we want to experience that salvation
or whether we would rather ‘make a
name for ourselves’ instead. Would we rather
remain in our pride, our sin, and our selfishness?
Would we rather stay and ‘make a
name for ourselves’ or would we rather give up
everything and follow Jesus into the promise? This is
our very real choice today. Sin and
Death have been defeated. Salvation has already
been provided for the whole world. The selfishness of
the people of
Babel
couldn’t stop it. No action on the part of any of us can stop
it. Salvation has already been provided for the world.
Our only choice now is whether we
want to experience it or not. And the only way to
experience it is to forget about making a name for
ourselves and instead leave all else
behind and decide to follow Jesus.
[1] Cf. Terence E.
Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon
Press: Nashville, 1994), p. 412 where he argues that
the primary sin here is the
unwillingness to move and the ‘making a name for
themselves’ is secondary.
[2] Josephus,
Antiquities I.iv.1. Cited from Terence E. Fretheim, The
Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon Press:
Nashville, 1994), p. 412.
[3] Terence E.
Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon Press
Nashville, 1994), p. 412
[4] Cf. John H.
Sailhamer, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, The,
Pradis CD-ROM:Genesis/Exposition of Genesis/I.
Introduction to the Patriarchs and
the Sinai Covenant (1:1-11:26)/E. The City of
Babylon
(11:1-9), Book
Version: 4.0.2
[5] Cf.
Brueggemann, Interpretation: Genesis,(John Knox Press:
Atlanta,
Georgia),
1982, pp.97-104 and Michael K. Chung , ‘The
Narrative of
the
Tower of
Babel in Dialogue with Postmodern
Christianity’, Presented to Fuller Theological Seminary (Fall
2005),
P. 7.
[6] John H.
Sailhamer, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, The, Pradis
CD-ROM:Genesis/Exposition of Genesis/I. Introduction to
the Patriarchs and the Sinai
Covenant (1:1-11:26)/E. The City of Babylon (11:1-9),
Book Version: 4.0.2 : the builders' attempt to make a
name for themselves is a central
feature of the story both in terms of the
internal structure of the story and its linking with
the surrounding narratives.
[7] Cf. R.C.H
Lenski, The Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles.
(Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House,
1961), 62.But cf. also Robert W.
Wall, Acts. (NIB X:
Nashville,
Tenn.:
Abingdon Press, 2002), 55.
[8] Terence E.
Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon Press:
Nashville, 1994), p. 411.
[9] Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay,
‘Covenant: When God is Bound: a look
at Genesis 15:7-21’, Journal of Aggressive Christianity, Issue
52, December 2007 – January 2008,
pp. 5-10. Available on-line:
http://www.armybarmy.com/pdf/JAC_Issue_052.pdf
[10] Terence E.
Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon
Press: Nashville, 1994), p. 422.
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